Life cycles - how long is yours?

jlinkels · 08-22-2010, 02:03 PM

I am using Debian since 2004, and I see no reason to change it.

Why should I? I have been investing 6 years in learning all ins and outs of Debian. Starting over with a new distro voids all that knowledge. Even Debian is not perfect.

I recommend against distro hopping. Changing distro because you can't solve something is replacing known problems with a lot of unknown problems.

jlinkels

MTK358 · 08-22-2010, 03:13 PM

+1 for Arch rolling release.

RockDoctor · 08-23-2010, 04:49 PM

Here's what's currently on my desktop PC:

Fedora Rawhide - installed Aug 22
Fedora 14alpha - installed Aug 15
Fedora 13 - installed Feb 27
Ubuntu 10.10alpha - installed Jun 12
Mint 9 - installed May 22

rkelsen · 08-23-2010, 06:21 PM

Good question!

A couple of months ago, I upgraded to Slackware 13.1 from version 12.0, which I had been using since July 2007. Prior to that, I was using 10.2 for almost 2 years. Before this, I was pretty much upgrading to new versions as they were released... all the way back to version 7.0.

As I get older, and other things in life take up more of my time, I find that I'm not so keen to upgrade something which works.

eveningsky339 · 08-23-2010, 07:53 PM

Ubuntu 9.10 since November 2009, then upgraded to 10.10 the day it was released.

Had an on-and-off love affair with openSUSE which ended about a month ago.

I'm also running any number of distro's in virtualbox at any given time-- Mint, PCLinuxOS, CentOS 5x, and PC-BSD 8.1.

konsolebox · 08-24-2010, 03:45 AM

My Gentoo init says 2007

DragonSlayer48DX · 08-24-2010, 04:20 AM

My "workhorse" distro is Ubuntu. I upgraded to 8.04 when support ended for 6.06.

I only use LTS versions; They're supported for three years.

Cheers

Thor_2.0 · 08-24-2010, 11:08 AM

So...maybe rkelsen's approach is the better one...dont touch it if it works...

Perhaps (if it is internet-safe) I should simply continue with FC10 until I'm fed up with it...
Then I will have to do the switch, Fedora changes way too frequently...

So...

hey, that leaves me with a void PC that I can play around with! Wheeee!!!!

eegerda · 08-24-2010, 12:30 PM

I used Fedora until 2008, F8 was the last verison of Fedora I used. Due to the short life cycle of Fedora I switched to Centos 5. I've been running Centos 5 ever since and never had a problem with it. When I do have time I do play with other distros in a VirtualBox.

Thor_2.0 · 09-03-2010, 02:32 AM

Hi,

Ok, all of ya: T-N-X!!!

I think I found my distro: Arch.

Requirements:
-Rolling, no need to reinstall over and over : check
-Up to date : check
-Sound in Java : check
-Sun JDK/JRE : check
-Speed : check, but that's to be expected, it is a newer machine...
-Educational : big check, I need a disto I can learn something from. Granted, I could have learned more from LFS, but hey, I'm not that accomplished yet...

All in all the distro I was looking for!

Thanks everybody

Thor

Kenny_Strawn · 09-03-2010, 03:33 AM

I keep updating my Linux installations to ensure they're bleeding edge (and in most cases do it by adding new package repositories [like Maverick ones to Lucid]), but I have had Ubuntu since Jaunty and Mint since 7 "Gloria". If you count the years before I got the new network adapter and before I switched back to WinBloze (briefly), I actually used Ubuntu Hardy and gOS 2 "Rocket" as well. Those were the days, but now I consider Linux my passion.

honeybadger · 09-03-2010, 09:00 AM

I am very impressed with Vector linux. This is the one that stays on the computer I use the most. Sadly they do not have the option to upgrade but then I always reformat the drive before installing a new one.
I agree with OP that the upgradation should not be done simply beacuse there is an issue you cannot solve. Forums like these exist for this very reason.
Learning the distros is something one should try doing.
So distrohopping is not recommended